Lord of Summer
by Joriel
Summary: An introspective Relena contemplates the loss of a freind and the world around her.


I remember this beach in the summer, filled with laughing happy people. They were laying in the sand, swimming in the surf, and playing games all around us. I remember the warm smells of the sun, the sand, and the sea.  
  
Now it's quiet. So silent...caught in winters chill grip and held tightly lest any scrap of it's former glorious life rise back into being. The smells are cold now. The sharp scent of winter, indefinable yet clearly recognizable, is everywhere. Underneath that unfriendly scent snow can be scented on the breeze, and the sea smells cold somehow. The sand does not smell at all without the hot kiss of the sun to warm it, to release the baked sand scent I loved so much.  
  
The sand does not move the same either. In the summer it's pliable and mobile, shifting easily under my feet as I walked. It almost embraced my feet with loving  
  
warmth and welcome, as if to say 'you belong'. Now it's stiff and unfriendly, making the simple act of walking a trial. All the life has been drained out of it, and it  
  
wants to drain the life from any who dare disturb it in it's winter-death.  
  
The sea still churns with white water that hits the shore, but it seems to lack the force of the summer tides, either the playful or angry ones. It is a sullen, reluctant tide  
  
that drives the chilled water now, perhaps resentful that it cannot freeze into beautiful ice like it's freshwater cousins. Briefly I wonder what happened to all the  
  
teeming life thriving in it's former warmth. I suppose I could ask a biologist, but I don't think I want to hear the clinical explanation of one of life's beautiful cycles.  
  
I sit my body in the cold sand, feeling the chill creeping into my flesh like an intangible invader. I can't help but let my mind compare it to the feeling of the warmth that  
  
gently washed through my body when I sat in this same place merely six months ago, a friendly and welcome spirit that sought to give, not steal from me.  
  
The winds are blowing grains of sand into the air, then dropping them back down capriciously into new patterns all around me. I feel that if I look long enough, stare  
  
hard enough, I can divine the pattern in the sands that will foretell my worlds death. For only death would be foretold here, in this lifeless beach that like a tree dies every year during the winter's cold embrace, only to have spring breath renewed life every summer.  
  
During this dead time, only death rules here. Nothing else matters, not in this place. I watch the dancing sands, patiently trying to read them to see what I can learn. I don't know if I believed in my own oracle fantasy or not, but for a moment I could see Duo's beautiful face in the sands. It was not that the sand formed an image of him, but a pattern that made my mind call him up. It seems like such a small, coincidental thing that I want to shrug it off and pretend it had not happened.  
  
But I know better. He was there, in the sand. Wanting me to see him, to see him smiling even in this winter-death. In his eternal winter. He wanted me to know that he is smiling there, so that I can smile here.  
  
Duo died the first day of winter. I remember thinking that if he had to go, it was the appropriate time for him to leave us. At first it had all seemed so senseless, a random act in a world of random acts, none with meaning. It was only later that I began to realize, if nothing else, that his death had meaning.  
  
For the other pilots, even Heero now lives his life hard and lets his emotions out, realizing how precious life is now that our living embodiment of it was drained away, like  
  
this beach. Winter took him from us, and I will never forgive it for that. But I cannot bring myself to hate it, it is just another part of life's cycles. The old die to make  
  
room for the young, and because we are all mortal in this cycle, sometimes mistakes happen and the young die too.  
  
Duo left to make room for someone else. He once told me that for everyone who dies in a day, someone else is born at the same moment. It's a balance. I didn't believe him, I thought he was being silly. But then I started to watch the census reports more closely that Dorothy gathered for me, and I realized while it may not be strictly true, it was very close.  
  
Duo was wise. He knew things. He wanted to be Shinigami. He wanted to be the Lord of Winter. He thought that if he could just convince himself that he was this, it would ease the pain all around him.  
  
And I finally know where that pain came from. He was not those things. He was Gaia's avatar, Right Hand of the Mother of Life. He was the Lord of Summer. And he couldn't stand all the pain of loss. For just as Summer creates new children every day to drive back Winter, so too does Winter take many lives to drive back Summer. And the balance remains.  
  
Without our Duo. I love him. It didn't stop when he died, just made room for the pain of losing him. I don't know if he loved me, even a little. I don't know if he loved Heero, there were rumors...  
  
And I didn't care. It would have hurt if he loved Heero, but I still would have been able to enjoy part of him. Love would eventually adapted, as all things of Life do, into friendship love, leaving me free to love another someday if he didn't. It wouldn't have hurt like this. I see the same pain reflected in Heero's eyes.  
  
This pain drew us together, and I have to laugh at the irony of it all. My childhood crush is finally seeing me, and I him, for who we really are. There is a kind of love  
  
forming there, but right now I am pushing it back. I am not ready.  
  
Winter is not yet over. In the spring, I will put aside the pain and stop mourning like this. Spring is when it will be time. Duo taught me there is a proper time for all things, and the trick is to recognize that time. Spring is the time of rebirth, of love, and of joy. When it comes I will open myself to it. Just as right now I am open to Winter, and live in it's pain and cold. Because now it is the time to mourn. Duo's loss is too new, only a few months old. And I'm not ready for Spring to take that away yet.  
  
So here I am, the Queen of the World, sitting alone on a beach. Seeing dead pilots in the sand, watching the almost slow-motion movement of the cold waters. I think if there were anyone else on this beach, they would be afraid for me. But suicide is the last thing on my mind. I just want to stare at the water, and try to understand. Try to hear the things that Duo did. He could hear the most amazing things, he used to confide in me late at night after the war. I listened with an open heart and mind, and learned.  
  
And now I hear something...at last. I hear the whispers of the sea, what it promises me. I am the Lady of Spring, and it's my turn now. The war is over, the world is ready to let go of the past. It is my time to touch the lives around me. And when I'm done, when my season is over, Duo will come back to us. Not as we knew him, but the Avatars are eternal. I can wait, and be ready to welcome my dear friend and secret heart's desire home. You see, Heero's time is ending. Heero is the true Lord of Winter, and he is ready to hand everything over to me.  
  
Duo...we will be ready for you to come home. I hear now, and I understand. Thank you for showing me the way. I will teach them all the way of the Seasons, the way of the world we live on. I will try to teach them to be a part of it, to stop fearing. And maybe, just maybe, I will teach them to stop hating. With the strength you gave me.  
  
I just wish you were here now with us to see and enjoy it, my beautiful Lord of Summer. I love you. 


End file.
